I wanted to write about premultiplied alpha, but realized I need to explain some things about filtering first. And then I realized that to properly explain filtering, I need to start with an even more fundamental theoretical question: what is a pixel...

"So, I have this shader that does normalmapping, and this other shader that does skinned animation. How can I use them both to render an animated normalmapped character?"
Welcome, my friend, to one of the fundamental unsolved problems of graphics programming...

The XNA Framework Content Pipeline tries to use incremental rebuilds wherever possible. This means if you add a hundred content files, build your project, change just one of those files, then build again, only that specific file needs to be rebuilt. In...